Focus on pocketbook issues and outreach can revive GOP

The fallout is always intense after a political party loses a presidential election it thought was winnable. That’s certainly been the case within the Republican Party since Mitt Romney’s loss to President Barack Obama in November. But instead of finding fault with Romney or his tactics, what’s crucial to a GOP revival is to learn from 2012 and apply those lessons to the 2014 midterm elections and the 2016 presidential campaign.

Political parties have been down before, only to be revived in just one presidential election cycle.

Consider where the Democrats stood after the 1988 election. In the previous five presidential elections, only once had the party’s nominee won more than 10 states – and that was in 1976, when Watergate-scarred Republicans came within 10,000 votes in Ohio and Hawaii of electing Gerald Ford. It was common to hear pundits talk of a GOP “Electoral College lock.” Four years later, GOP President George H.W. Bush went down to one of the most crushing defeats of any incumbent, winning only 37 percent of the vote.

The conventional view is that a similar Republican rebound now will be very difficult. Young, first-time voters overwhelmingly supported Obama, possibly putting many on track for a life of backing Democrats. The nation’s changing demographics also favor Democrats. Fast-growing Latino and Asian voting blocs strongly backed Obama in 2012.

But there are several reasons for hope.

They start with the likelihood that young voters will face a double helping of disillusionment with Democrats in coming years. Starting Jan. 1, under yet another provision of Obamacare that has barely gotten any media attention, young people begin subsidizing the health insurance of the elderly. By law, the premiums of the healthiest segment of the population (the young) must be at least one-third the premiums of the least healthy segment (the old). Premiums are expected to increase 42 percent for those 21 to 29 as a result, and it will no longer be legal for the young to forgo health insurance. This will be a powerful pocketbook issue benefiting Republicans.

Meanwhile, most independent economists forecast continued historically high unemployment. The rate for those aged 20 to 24 who are seeking work is now 14 percent and likely to stay in that range. At some point, blaming the U.S. economy’s poor performance on a president who left office in January 2009 will lose its appeal – especially among jobless or underemployed young people struggling to pay off huge student loans. This is another powerful pro-GOP pocketbook issue.

Also offering hope are cultural factors in the two fastest-growing demographics. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that George W. Bush got 40 percent of the Latino vote in 2004, far more than Romney. Republicans can regain that level of support and more not just by emphasizing Bush-style empathy on immigration issues but by establishing that they are the party that celebrates individual accomplishment and small business – not the party of government, but the party that reflects the values of the hardworking Latino community.